There is such a thing as a free breakfast

The chief supervisor at our private tool manufacturing industry was a quinquagenarian baldy.

The chief supervisor at our private tool manufacturing industry was a quinquagenarian baldy. A typical scrounger, the CS, as he was better known to us, was an armchair supervisor who came to office on an empty stomach—as he himself boasted. The office of the CS was cater-cornered to the canteen and situated at the end of a long veranda skirting the workshop. He had a handful of senior technicians around him who were dinning into his ears the progress of the production works at the lower level from time to time.

Our working hours were from 8 am to 3 pm with no strings attached to our movement to the canteen for snacks or a cuppa. But before going to the canteen, workers would have to take permission from the CS who would readily let them go, for that was always a chance for him to have his breakfast at their expense. 

Noting his subordinates going to the canteen he would follow them and take a seat beside them uninvited. When the eats ordered by them reached the table he would initially decline the offer a tad reluctantly but when pressed by them, even a wee bit, he would unhesitatingly accept it and soon brazenly polishing off the dish, excuse himself from their company and return to his office.    

Just adjacent to his small office was a coffee club for the higher officials like production manager, quality control manager and others where coffee, tea, bread toast, omelette and what not would be prepared and served to them in their offices. Through one of the windows of the club he would, with a wide grin on his face, supplicate the man brewing coffee for a cup of the hot brew, blatantly lying to him that the production manager had permitted him to have it from there whenever he wanted.

Knitting his eyebrows the person preparing the drink would place a cupful of it on the window sill. Picking it up the old geezer would slurp it to the bottom in a trice, immune to the contemptible glances of his subordinates around. His higher officials always closed their eyes to all that he did unbecoming of his position. He was a pet of all those in the higher tier of the industry since he was getting their defective household domestic gadgets repaired at the industry by the workers free of cost. 

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